Robust adaptive tracking control for input and state constrained uncertain nonlinear systems with unknown control directions

Abstract

This article is committed to studying the tracking control problem for a class of uncertain nonlinear system with unknown control coefficients. The system is subject to full-state constraints, input saturation constraint, and external disturbances simultaneously. By introducing a hyperbolic tangent function to approximate the saturated input function, the sharp corner caused by the input saturation is avoided. In the meanwhile, an auxiliary system is constructed to compensate the approximation error. By using the barrier Lyapunov function based adaptive backstepping control, the Nussbaum-type adaptive controllers are constructed for the augmented system with unknown control direction. It not only ensures the system states are always within the constrained range, but also guarantees the tracking performance of the system, no matter whether the control direction of the system is known or not. Meanwhile, dynamic surface control is used in the controller design, which avoids ‘computation explosion’ caused by the repeated derivation of virtual control law. It improves the tracking performance of the system and reduces the burden of the controller greatly. Finally, a simulation example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme in three scenarios.